8 key skills for marketing consultants to master

Marketing consultants provide important services that help companies market their products and services—and hopefully grow their business! Your knowledge and experience are essential, but you may also want to develop certain hard and soft skills to build your marketing consulting career.

If you’re looking to start or grow a digital marketing business, consider mastering these eight skills:

1. Active listening

One of the first things a marketing consultant does on any project is talking to the client. You’ll want to hear their project goals and expectations, as well as identify potential issues. Developing your active listening skills can help make this process more efficient and productive.

Active listening is taking steps to really hear what the client has to say and understand their needs. Active listeners do not interrupt the speaker and are not simply waiting to respond to what is being said. They ask thoughtful questions and watch the client’s body language to pick up on important non-verbal cues.

2. Research

General and product marketing consultants often do research as part of their jobs. Research is an essential part of creating any marketing plan. It helps you discover industry trends, analyze a client’s competitors, and identify marketing opportunities.

Importantly, research helps back up your recommendations to a client. It provides proof that the plan you’ve created is in line with their goals and should help the business reach them. Research can also help you build your professional knowledge, which can be applied to future projects.

3. Planning

Solid planning skills are also essential to building a marketing consulting career. You’ll need a business plan for running your consultancy—a document that lays out your goals and how you will achieve them.

Planning is also essential to creating effective marketing plans for your clients. Without a plan, meeting deadlines and hitting targets may be a challenge (if not impossible). A plan helps you and the client stay on track so they meet their goals and are able to measure their success.

4. Organization

Strong organizational skills go hand in hand with planning. If you are disorganized, it may be difficult to make solid plans and stick to them. Disorganization wastes valuable time that could be spent in other areas of running your digital marketing business.

Organization also helps you put your best foot forward with clients. It shows your professionalism and that you are prepared and able to answer their questions. Organization can help build client trust and reinforce their confidence in you to get their job done right.

5. Creativity

Strategy and marketing consultants are perfect pairs, but it will only get you so far. You’ll also need a healthy dose of creativity! Making your client’s brand resonate with the right audience also takes a bit of imagination.

Creativity is a key part of many successful marketing plans. Coming up with new ideas that engage customers is at the heart of what a marketing consultant does. A creative concept can increase brand awareness, drive sales, and begin to create brand trust. It helps your clients stand out from the crowd, which can be extremely important if they work in a competitive industry.

6. Problem-solving

You may have a killer creative concept and solid creative, but things don’t always go to plan. That’s when your problem-solving skills may be needed. Problem-solving can help you manage issues that arise from your marketing strategies and get the entire project back on track.

Problem-solving skills can help you at every stage of a marketing project. They help you identify and minimize issues early, pivot activities that are not working as planned, and analyze results. Your problem-solving skills can also help you learn from mistakes and provide even better recommendations in the future.

7. Writing

Product marketing consultants should also have excellent writing skills. Writing is a part of most marketing plans, from copywriting and blogs to video scripts and press releases. Even if you are not producing all of this content yourself, you may need to review and edit documents before they are published.

Writing can also help you communicate clearly with your clients. You may call on your writing skills to prepare reports, create project proposals, and respond to emails. If your writing is exemplary, it can help you avoid potential issues (such as mistakes and misunderstandings) that could lead to a lawsuit.

8. Analytics

Measuring the results of a project is another part of running a digital marketing business. Your clients will want proof that the marketing plan you proposed worked. Strong analytical skills can help you turn raw data into a coherent report.

Analytics is a combination of math and logic skills. It requires taking page views, clicks, sales and other vital data to measure the success of a project. You may need to carefully dig into the numbers, as often, determining what worked (and what did not) is not always obvious.

Protecting your digital marketing business

If you’re wondering how to become a digital marketing consultant, you may want to start by developing the above skills. These talents and abilities can help you work efficiently, communicate clearly with clients, and provide outstanding marketing services.

Product marketing consultant skills also help protect your business. Mistakes in your work, misunderstandings between you and your clients, and missed deadlines are just a few of the ways that lawsuits and financial loss claims happen in digital marketing businesses. Doing everything you can to avoid these and other incidents helps protect you and your business financially.

And when your best efforts fail, there’s Professional Liability insurance to help protect your bank accounts and professional reputation.

A type of consultant insurance, Professional Liability insurance protects you from claims raised due to unintentional mistakes made in the professional capacity. Your policy could protect your digital marketing business against costly claims and lawsuits, whether you are at fault or not.

Get consultant insurance today!

Protect your digital marketing business with Professional Liability, General Liability and other essential coverage designed for marketing consultants online in minutes. Compare policies with BizInsure and get covered instantly—no complicated paperwork required.

Compare free quotes online today with BizInsure.